5 Stupid Tricks of Windows 7 you don’t use often

Windows 7 is here for a long time now but still there are many simple tricks which a general user may not have explored. Here are some of  those stupid tricks to make things easy while performing regular operations.

Save on Desktop Quickly

You can directly save an item directly from a web browser to desktop just by dragging that link / image to “Show Desktop” Button.

If you wish to save an image loaded on Firefox to desktop then drag the image to Show Desktop button at extreme bottom right and wait until desktop appears.

Now place it anywhere on desktop and it will become a image file. Same applies for any type of file may be PDF, MP3 or anything; if you try to save hyperlink then it will be saved as link shortcut.

Add blank white space on taskbar

May be there is a reason or you just wish to have a blank space in the list of icons on taskbar. This can be used to have a separator between categorized icon list on taskbar. To do that, follow steps below:

1. Create a New Text Document (Right click> New> Text Document);

2. Rename its extension to txt to exe;

3. Drag the file you just renamed the taskbar;

4. Press and hold Shift keyboard, right click on the file you just added to the taskbar and select Property from the context menu;

5. Click on the button Change Icon and give OK notice appearing later;

6. Double click on one of the icons transparent (white space) in the library Shell32.dll.

Format Text in Sticky notes

Sticky notes allows you to write notes, tasks or just make a list of things and stick on desktop. However, it is temporary but I am sharing some keyboard shortcuts with which you can format text in sticky notes.

Bold: CTRL + B

Italic: CTRL + I

Underline: CTRL + U

Strikethrough: CTRL + T

List: CTRL + SHIFT + L (several times to change the list type)

Decrease / Increase text size: CTRL + middle mouse wheel

Advanced Windows Explorer Search

To refine your search on Windows 7, here are some useful keywords to use:

Use the asterisk (*) as wildcard. Example, you can search for all files with the extension “doc” type *. doc.

Type the ” size “and choose one of the items that appear in the menu for auto-completion search files according to their size. It becomes possible to search for empty documents (0KB), tiny (0-10KB), small (10-100KB), medium (100KB – 1MB), large (1-16MB), large (16-128MB) or Gigantic (over the 128MB).

Use the suffix “type” to search for files based on their type. Typing “type: document is then possible to identify all text documents, typing” type: video “you can search for video and so on.

Power / Energy efficiency Report and Diagnostics

You can get a very detailed report on energy efficiency of the system and the problems associated with it by starting the command prompt and giving the command powercfg -energy. After a quick analysis of about 60 seconds, you can review the report by opening the file “C:\Windows\System32\energy-report.html”

Convert ODT openoffice document to DOC MS Office format

By default, Microsoft office doesn’t allow to open / edit OpenOffice Document or ODT files. Way is using Wordpad inbuilt in Windows 7; Open ODT file in Wordpad and then in File menu > Save As > Office XML Document.

This was just another stupid trick added as a bonus tip in this article and the above feature can be used vice versa if needed.